Bruce Weber to Open an Exhibition at the Detroit Institute of Arts

In an exuberant new exhibition, Bruce Weber captures Detroit, a place brimming with American know-how and classic cool.

Detroit is one of those cities—like New York or Paris—that call out to photographers. “Over the years, I’d see pictures by Cartier-Bresson and Robert Frank, portraits done in Detroit,” Bruce Weber says, “and I’d say, ‘I wonder why all those guys went there.’ And as soon as I got there, I knew why. There’s a freedom there that doesn’t exist anywhere else.”

Weber, who throughout his career has sought the beautiful all across America, was discussing his upcoming exhibition at the Detroit Institute of Arts—titled “Detroit—Bruce Weber” (and cosponsored by Condé Nast), it will run from June 20 through September 7—and recalling the first time he visited the Motor City, in 2006, to shoot for W. The first thing he did was call up Aretha Franklin to ask about her hometown. “It’s like a small town in a big city, and everybody knows each other,” Weber says. More recently, he returned to photograph for Shinola, the watchmaking company hoping to turn Detroit into the Switzerland of the U.S.: At its headquarters, retrained autoworkers manufacture luxury watches in the same downtown building that once helped create classic car designs—and a booming American economy.

Weber’s Detroit is a parade of locals—people out and about who are, in his images, happy to be there: a flower girl on Belle Isle, worshippers at Perfecting Church, a SpongeBob-influenced suit worn by Detroit designer Von Jour Reece. Weber’s emphasis on the positive has greatly pleased residents, who have seen their city—with its deserted factories and fields—become the capital of so-called ruin porn, Detroit as wasteland. “We’ve got a bad rap for being this dangerous, abandoned place,” says Nancy Barr, curator of photography at DIA, “but the 700,000 people who live here are mostly great people who are friendly and smile and have wonderful lives here, and that’s what Detroit’s about.” Barr notes that Weber was among the only photographers to shoot at Kronk, the legendary boxing gym, since closed. “Bruce kind of nailed that, and he photographed a lot of young poets and musicians and creative people here. He tapped into this little piece of Detroit that nobody’s really seen.”

Lately, vision is what Detroiters are asking for, as newcomers, from 20-something urban farmers to landscape theorists, flock to town to help rebuild the bankrupt city. The old guard wants them to see not just the shuttered factories but a metro area that has been growing for decades and an urban citizenry that has stayed hyperproductive: Berlin DJs are still inspired by DJs in Detroit, and people have continued to order a coney (that’s Motor City for chili dog) at Lafayette Coney Island since Patti Smith met her husband, Fred, there, in 1976. “All of those are part of the mix,” says Jerry Herron, professor of English and American Studies at Wayne State University. “It’s the mix that matters. See the whole thing.”

Or at least see Weber’s shot of a young guy with a car embedded in his so-blue hair, a vestige of the nineties Hair Wars and more proof that you don’t need a balanced municipal budget to hit the creative jackpot. Weber had questions, of course. “I said, ‘Can you move a lot?’ He said, ‘You have to be careful.’ But that’s the thing—the art there just doesn’t happen in a museum. It happens out on the street, and I’m not talking about graffiti.”